


tread softly on the vestige

by Tiss



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chronic Pain, Dreams, Full Shift Werewolves, Inspired by Spirit of the North, M/M, Mysticism, On Hiatus, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Some weird shit, Werewolves, what am I even doing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24804928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiss/pseuds/Tiss
Summary: That night, Noctis dreams of ruins.In the ruins, he meets a man and a wolf.
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia/Noctis Lucis Caelum
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A.k.a., the one where I played Spirit of the North and thought, “That, but with wolves,” and then whoopsed all over a text file.
> 
> This isn’t the one I’ve been slaving over, btw, this is the random thing I’m doing to keep myself from overstressing because writing a vaguely planned complicated fic with character growth and no fluff or fun tropes is hard. So. All the fun and tropes go here.
> 
> There are some spoilers for Spirit of the North that aren’t actually spoilers, I don’t think. I didn’t include any actual plot elements, at least, so if you want to play SotN later, you should be safe

**1.**

“Don’t you think ruins are interesting, though? As a motif?”

Noctis watches on as Prompto walks from painting to painting, pausing before each one to take in the details. They came to the Royal Gallery for the photography exhibition, but then Prompto got distracted by the paintings on permanent display. They’ve come as far as the Nova Antiqua period. Every single painting in the hall currently features Solheim ruins in one way or another. Noctis thinks they're Solheim, in any case.

“Kind of? Why are there so many of them, anyway?”

“I don’t really know that well, honestly, it seems like a bit of a long story, but apparently in the time of King Optimus a lot of artists painted ruins. They were popular, I guess, and they sold.”

Noctis only hums without much interest in response. Prompto either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“People were really big on ancient past and the forgotten parts and dreams, stuff like that. Apparently, it came out in literature, too. Half the poetry was about, uh, dreaming about forgotten past, stuff like that.

“It’s just, I kinda get where they were coming from, I guess, looking at these. Really get into a daydreaming mood, yanno?”

Noctis doesn’t know, but he nods for Prompto’s benefit.

Prompto keeps doing his rounds along the paintings, and Noctis parks himself on a bench to let his sore knee and back relax. There’s a large, seriously huge painting right across from him, with some sort of dilapidated temple rendered in warm colors and mind-boggling detail. Noctis can’t help getting sucked in, examining one part after another and constantly finding something that he hadn’t noticed before.

Maybe he does know, a little bit.

That night, Noctis dreams of ruins.

He dreams in the kind of color and clarity that he doesn’t usually get. In his dream, he walks through a forest. Everything is tinted distinctly blue, but the entire sky is glowing a clean, gentle white, and there’s no sun.

He walks for a long time. The forest is old, with wide, well-worn paths winding and crisscrossing their way through the vegetation and blankets of moss clinging to the trees and their worn bark, to the grainy boulders and the fallen, hollowed-out trunks. After a while, he comes to a wide, but shallow creek. The water is clear and cool under his feet.

Three things occur to him then.

Firstly, this is not his body.

Secondly, nothing hurts.

Thirdly, he is not exactly human at the moment.

When he looks down at his feet properly, he sees that they are a dog’s feet. They are also not feet, technically. If anything, since they seem to eventually attach to his shoulders, they must be his hands, even though those are very clearly paws.

Even more strangely, those paws don’t seem to be solid.

They are see-through, and colorless, and the glow they cast reflects on the water in bright glints. He twists around, but can’t bend well enough to see the rest of his body. The creek shows no reflections of anything and doesn’t soak his fur.

What really drives home the fact that this is a dream, though, is that there is no pain. None. His body feels light as a feather, like he could run for hours without getting tired. He hasn’t felt this way since the accident.

For this alone, he would gladly stay in this dream for as long as he can.

He runs.

He runs, and water splashes and pebbles slide apart under his paws, and it’s easy and fun and _free_ in a way moving hasn’t been in a decade. In fact, he can’t remember ever moving without the pain anymore. He has the memories _of_ moving, but not of how it had felt.

Of course he doesn’t. How do you even remember something like that?

The thought passes, washed away on the water along with the acid of resentment, and Noctis runs.

There is no telling how much time has passed when the creek curves around the face of a cliff, and Noctis follows it past the two pillars on either bank that seem to mark some sort of gate.

Beyond the cliff, a scant few hundred meters ahead, stands a ruined fortress.

In front of the fortress, back turned to Noctis, stands a man.

Slowly, the man turns his face.

Noctis only gets a glimpse before he wakes up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pfuawgh

**2.**

Waking is as tedious as it always is. Noctis feels like he could sleep another ten hours, but Ignis is there, and the one thing he won’t let Noctis get away with is getting up. Noctis knows it’ll get easier to keep his eyes open once he’s up and doing something, but right now, nothing could be more difficult than making his limbs move.

His back hurts this morning. He’d give it four out of ten. Maybe five.

Ignis gives him a Look when he sees him move, and reminds him there are pain meds in the side table if he needs them. Noctis gives him a Look right back. He can deal with four on his own just fine. If he ever needs those meds for a worse day, he’d rather not find out that he’s worked up a tolerance because he’d been eating them like snacks for every little ouch.

Ignis doesn’t sigh, but he wants to. Noctis can tell.

He goes through his morning routines and gets pretty far into a nap-worthy meeting about the recent road maintenance budget cuts when he realizes he forgot to do his stretches this morning. Again.

Too late to do anything about that now.

His back twinges.

Like he needs another reminder.

He gets halfway through his training session with Cor before the man wises up to his tricks and chews him out for straining his old wounds when they’re already aggravated. He bears it with as blank a face as he can muster; coming from his father’s Shield and long-time friend, the reprimands sting, but Noctis is too old to let that show.

Maybe he should, considering he gets sent to his room like a child.

He goes back to his room anyway because he might as well, and his back hurts. He changes out of his suit, and his back hurts. He gets ready for bed and lies down, even though it’s barely evening, and his back hurts.

For the umpteenth time, the dream he had last night comes up in his thoughts.

It would be nice, he thinks, if he could see that dream again. He’d really like to remember what it feels like to move without the threat of pain.

And then he sleeps, and dreams, and gets a completely different woodland.

The forest floor is springy with moss and pine needles under his feet. The trees aren’t leafy, and the overcast sky above is a glowing white, yet the woods around him are dark and cool and smell distinctly of some sort of green that’s tinged with blue and cold. The air that slips through his nostrils is sharp. He isn’t cold, himself, but the cold is everywhere around him, and that, he feels.

This is weirdly vivid for a dream.

He picks a direction and starts walking, and his back immediately reminds him that he does not get a free ticket out of pain this time around. He walks anyway. He is sick to death of making allowances for his stupid back.

This forest feels so much more wild than the previous dream. There are no paths or anything; Noctis’ ankles keep brushing against grass and ferns and low-growing shrubbery, and he can’t see too far through the trees for all the underbrush. The branch tips of the small, waist high firs are a bright, newborn green.

In fighting his way past them, Noctis doesn’t notice he’s come to a clearing until he hears a sound. He doesn’t identify it, though, because all thoughts of sounds blow right out of his mind when he looks up.

On the other side of the clearing, half-melting into the shadow of the trees, is an enormous wolf.

It is huge, and furry, and scarred, and absolutely freaking huge. Noctis didn’t know wolves even grew to that size. Fear zings with electricity down his limbs, and he twitches back reflexively.

The wolf stands there, impassive and almost bored, and just _watches_.

Seconds tick by, and slowly, the awareness trickles in that this is, in fact, a dream, and Noctis’ heart rate creeps down to normal levels. The wolf doesn’t attack, or even move much aside from flicking an ear on occasion and turning its head to look around. It’s almost like Noctis isn’t even there, except for the way it keeps throwing sideways glances at him.

Noctis doesn’t know what to do. There’s little point in running away now, since there’s no real danger, but approaching an inordinately large predator seems like an even worse idea. Still, he can’t help being curious. He’d heard from Ignis, once, that everyone you meet in your dreams can tell you something about yourself. Noctis isn’t sure if a wolf would count as someone rather than something, but it’s unusual enough that he’d rather investigate than leave.

Besides, who knows: maybe the wolf would follow him anyway. The only other character in his dream probably wouldn’t exit the scene just because Noctis decides to change the background.

Before Noctis can move so much as an inch, though, the wolf jerks its head up and perks its ears, as if listening for something.

Noctis focuses on his own hearing, but doesn’t catch anything. The wolf must have heard something, though, because in the next moment, it looks Noctis dead in the eye, stares for a solid few seconds and then chuffs quietly at him.

Dumbfounded, Noctis stares back.

The wolf waits, and waits, and then huffs and moves at last, padding over – not to Noctis, but to the side of the clearing somewhere, head bent down and nose close to the ground. There, it raises its head and looks at Noctis again, chuffing once more when he doesn’t react.

Noctis would very much like to react, but dream or not, he still doesn’t want to get his face bitten off.

A moment later, the wolf takes the choice out of his hands.

It seems to run out of patience and releases a short, low bark before trotting over to Noctis. Up close, he can see the furrow between its eyes – brown; the scar bisecting its left eyebrow and cheek. Unease crawls up his spine.

Then the wolf rounds him and pushes him insistently and steadily forward.

Noctis, wary of falling over and weirded out to the extreme, goes with it.

The wolf pushes until Noctis ends up roughly at the spot that it had been investigating before, and then rounds him again and stands there, staring at Noctis again, expectant and still frowning.

“What?” Noctis demands, flat.

Then he glances down.

At the bear tracks, plainly visible in a patch of mud.

The wolf huffs loudly and begins to walk away. It stops at the edge of the clearing, though, and looks back at Noct.

Then it chuffs at him, and waits.

It occurs to Noctis, finally, that the chuff probably means, _Come_.

With a last, careful look around the clearing, Noctis follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oct 19, 2020: on hiatus because life is hard and I barely have time for my major WIPs, to say nothing about a little throwaway whatever fic. Might get back to this, might not. Don't hold too much hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not a fan of uploading works that I’m not sure I’ll finish, but eh. Might as well. If I decide to abandon it, I’ll let you guys know.


End file.
